The image of the tomato represents the digestion of pictures. Hybert shows that two tomatoes (on top of each other and against each other) result in tomato puree. The picture Antitraumatiseur de légumes evokes the question of functionality. In one of the many picture captions which overlap and obscure one another palimpsest-like, Hybert suggests that one should “not be destroyed by the anti-trauma (stress) but should serve the trauma.”

As with Adorno’s critical optimism, Hybert shares the pragmatic emphasis on a dynamic art of experience conjoined with his scepticism of every attempt at making a static object into fetish. However, just like Adorno, a “purely pragmatic functionality of art” escapes Hybert.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)